As a Jewish kid, I remember my father telling me that I was a “Levite.” As an atheist, I attach no significance to this, but what significance would it have if I were a practicing Orthodox Jew?
And what percentage of modern Jews are in fact Levites? My ex said he was also one; is this an amazing coincidence or are we fairly ubiquitous?
It means that you are a direct descendent of Levi, one of the sons of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. In other words, your father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s … father was Levi.
Because Levi’s descendants did not participate in the incident of the Golden Calf, they - and future descendants - were rewarded with a special status, special priveleges, and special duties.
More info at Wikipedia: Levite
(is it a coincidence that this thread is on the same day as the one about ancestors?)
In practical terms, it means that, were you to go to a traditional synagogue on a day when the Torah was read, you would likely be offered the chance to read from it (a Levite is supposed to be given one of the readings, and since Levites are a rather small minority of Jews overall, your chances would be good). That’s about it.
How reliable are modern identifications of particular Jews as Levites? Is the traditional belief of a particular family that they are Levites accepted unquestioningly by the community, or does it need some kind of corroboration?
I believe it differs by group. By this point, it’s likely that every Jew on the planet qualifies as a Levite, and many Jews no longer make the distinction IIRC.
I read an article in Moment a couple of years ago. Given the families name Levy, Levin, etc. and DNA testing, pretty darn reliable. There line was “Please step up to the bema for a blood test.” 
No, because Levite and Kohanim status is patrilineal.
But wait…isn’t Levi one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?
I dunno, the Reform Rabbi here is named Levy.
Not really.
The nine/ten annexed tribes were Reuben, Simon, Issachar, Zebulan, Dan, Napftali, Gad, Asher, and “Joseph” (Menashe/Ephraim).
The remaining tribes were Judah and Benjamin.
The tribe of Levi was considered different form all the other tribes, and thus not always counted with them. The Levites didn’t have one ancestral territory, but live in scattered cities among the rest of the tribes. Presumably, the Levites that lived with the Lost Tribes were lost, and the Levites that lived in Judah/Benjamin territory survived.
ETA: I may have gotten the transliterations wrong. I’m used to the Hebrew forms of the names.
The Levites had no specific tribal territory and thus were scattered among all the other tribal territories. Thus, when the Kingdom split into Judah (with which the tribe of Benjamin allied) and Israel (the other ten tribes, led by Ephraim), there were Levites in the J & B territories as well as in those of the other ten.
Also, both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures talk about certain people after the Restoration who were of the ten tribes, so it would be safe to assume that some people with the ten may well have gone over into Judah, as well as some Judahites and Benjaminites going over into Israel,
Incidentally, some Bible scholars hold that when the Assyrian Empire fell & was replaced by the Babylonian Empire which then took Judah captive, the Israelite captives were reunited with the Judahite captives, possibly by Ezekiel (Ch 36-37),
and they were all restored to the land by Cyrus et al. Thus, the tribes never were lost.
I’d be reasonably confident that Jews adopted family names long after the diaspora - as in, many centuries after it - so I wouldn’t attach too much weight to that. The most the name “Levy” can suggest is that the person so named is a descendant of someone who adopted that surname perhaps six or eight hundred years ago in the belief that he was a Levite. But that just raises the question, how well-founded was his belief?
Likewise, DNA tests don’t get you anywhere unless you have a match to the DNA of someone known, and not merely assumed or believed, to have been a Levite.
Actually, although this status is passed on via the father, and in the great majority of cultures worldwide the family name is also passed via the father, the family name is not a guarantee of this status.
One problem is that Levite status is passed only through a biological father, and adoptees often take the adoptive family name. Another situation is the occasional case of taking a mother’s family name. (I think this was done as a tactic to avoid getting drafted into the Russian army, when only sons of a family where exempt.) There are also people who simply change their family name for whatever reason.
On top of all that, another factor is simply that family histories are often unreliable pieces of hearsay. Witness our own OP, who, with all due respect, might be misremembering something that he heard many years ago.
Given all the above, there are indeed some rabbis who are uncomfortable with the idea of simply accepting anyone who claims this status. But DNA testing has a whole 'nother set of problems, and there’s really no other way of documenting or corroborating it. Some people might bring photos of a grandfather’s tombstone which says “Levite” on it (it’s part of the Hebrew name), but insisting in that would disenfranchise legitimate Levites who don’t have access to such graves for whatever reason.
So despite the discomfort they have about not being totally sure, the rabbis do one of the things that they’re really good at: Continuing the same tradition that we’ve had for thousands of years (i.e., to simply take people at their word).
Someone or other had done DNA studies of families whose name was a derivation of Levite, and found a bunch of them to match. Sorry I don’t have a cite.
I’ve seen that too. I even remember that they made sure to look only at the DNA parts which come specifically from one’s father.
But I’ve questioned the logic of those studies. The way I see it, those studies must be presuming that the original Levi (Jacob’s son) was some kind of mutant, because otherwise his brothers (Jacob’s other sons, and hence all Jews everywhere) would also have had that gene. Either that, or the stuff they found developed after Levi’s lifetime, and would be present in only one group of his descendants.
I’ve got these magazines stacked up somewhere, I’ll dig through them tomorrow.
Despite the traditional understanding of Scripture, there were not “ten Lost Tribes.” To start with, there were actually 13 tribes, classed in two groups of twelve depending on your perspective. First, Israel (the man FKA Jacob) had twelve sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Joseph, and Benjamin. Joseph’s two sons Ephraim and Manasseh were counted as the founders of two half-tribes usually listed in place of “Joseph”. However, the land of Canaan (including part of present Jordan) was divided geographically into twelve units given to twelve tribes named after ten of Jacob’s sons (skipping Levi and Joseph) plus Joseph’s two sons. Reuben, Gad, and about half of Manasseh were settled east of the River Jordan in present Jordan; most of the land south of Jerusalem was given to Judah, with Simeon getting a strip at the extreme south, and Benjamin the area just north. Dan originally got the Gaza-Ashkelon coastal strip, but lost it to the Philistines and resettled for the most part in the extreme north. Ephraim and the rest of Manasseh got the middle area, and the other tribes got the north. Levi got specific cities scattered around within the territory of the others, and by and large becane the hereditary scholars and worship leaders. Within Levi, the descendants of Aaron became the Kohanim, the hereditary priests. Much but not all of Levi concentrated in Jerusalem and its surroundings after it was finally conquered and nade the cultic worship center for the united kingdom. Simeon seems to have lost its separate identity and attached itself to Jodah.
So Reuben, Gad, and Simeon were early losses, as the east-of-Jordan area was lost and Simeon assimilated to Judah. When Jeroboam’s revolt succeeded, the central and northern tribes seceded but were never ten in number. Judah and Benjamin, presumably with most of Levi and the remnant of Simeon, remained loyal to the House of David. The tribes which were exiled after the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom, then, were Ephraim, what was left of Manasseh, Issachar, Zebulon, Dan, Naphtali, Asher, and a part of Levi. And we have small notes here and there suggesting that not everyone was exiled, right down to Anna daughter of Phanuel, of the Tribe of Asher, mentioned in the New Testament Nativity narratives.